US e-commerce market to grow by 13 per cent this year

The flourishing US e-commerce market generated $231 billion (£154 billion) in sales for retailers in 2012, but bigger streams of online shoppers are poised to push the total up even further this year.

Mashable.com says market research giant Forrester is all set to release figures predicting the value of e-commerce to rise by 13 per cent in 2013, growing to reach a total of $262 billion (£175 billion).

The market already accounts for around eight per cent of all retail sales stateside, but it’s set to become even more crucial to businesses in the next five years. Forrester believes online will outpace transactions and growth at brick-and-mortar stores by 2017, reaching $370 billion (£247 billion) in sales.

Year-on-year growth for the channel would come in the form of a 13 per cent hike in business for 2013 before slowing slightly to reach 11 per cent in 2014, ten per cent in 2015, eight per cent in 2016 and seven per cent in 2017 as online shopping starts to realise its full potential.

In this case, retailers wishing to target US consumers may want to set up their websites and online credit card processing systems this year, as 2013 is expected to be the biggest for growth.

Other predictions from Forrester revealed that the US wasn’t the only country expecting to see growth in its online shopping market. E-commerce sales in western Europe are expected to grow at an even faster rate than the States over the next five years – jumping from 112 billion Euros (£97 billion) in 2012 to reach 191 billion Euros (£166 billion) in 2017.

This would signal a compound growth rate of 11 per cent compared with nine per cent in the US, cites geosurf.info.